Commissioners suspend medical store license

CHIEFTAIN PHOTO/JOHN JAQUES
Pueblo County commissioners on Monday permanently suspended the license for marijuana business Day Dreamz LLC, on the St. Charles Mesa.

BY JEFF TUCKER
The Pueblo Chieftain

Published: June 12, 2014;Last modified: June 13, 2014 12:52PM

The Pueblo Board of County Commissioners has suspended the license of a medical marijuana establishment pending a hearing into alleged violations at the store.

The commissioners voted 2-0 on Monday to suspend the license of Day Dreamz, LLC, 1805 Santa Fe Drive, after a report listed numerous violations of state and local marijuana codes stemming from an inspection in February.

Commissioner Terry Hart was absent and excused from the meeting.

The company’s license will be suspended until after a hearing is held before the commissioners. No date for that hearing has been set.

At the heart of the violations is the discovery of a safe that was found to contain more than 100 ounces of marijuana as well as edibles and tinctures.

The company is facing charges of possessing marijuana without a license, possessing marijuana not grown on the premises, possessing marijuana with no provenance for its origins and that owner Michelle Sais deliberately misled investigators, including submitting forged documents.

While the county had approved Day Dreamz’s application for a medical license in January, it was contingent on the completion of an inspection and other requirements.

No such license had been issued at the time of the inspection and no marijuana was allowed on site until the paperwork was finished.

Jason Chambers, marijuana enforcement officer, said in a report that he was called to the business after Pueblo Rural Fire was inspecting the building and one of the inspectors smelled marijuana.

Chambers said when he asked Sais to open the safe, she told him she had bought it at a garage sale and didn’t know the combination.

Chambers said Sais claimed the store was going to open the next day and said it would wholesale its supplies.

Chambers said the state didn’t have any records indicating Day Dreamz was wholesaling its supply.

Sais left a little while later, Chambers said, claiming to have a family emergency. When Pueblo County sheriff’s deputies obtained a warrant to search the safe, the door to the room had been locked. Deputies eventually cut the knob from the door, Chambers said.

Connie Rojas, Sais’ sister, contacted someone by phone to get the combination to the safe but would not tell investigators who that was, Chambers said.

The marijuana and marijuana products were found inside the safe and collected by deputies.

A month after the inspection, Chambers said, the state contacted his office and informed him that the papers Day Dreamz had filed naming its wholesale supplier appeared to have been forged.

This is not the first time Pueblo County has suspended a license at this address.

In November 2012, the board of commissioners suspended a license for Legal Meds, which operated at the same location.

Sais also is connected to that business, according to records on file with the Colorado Secretary of State.

Jason Perez was the original registered agent listed for Legal Meds when it incorporated in 2010. But Sais took over that role for a few months in August 2013 when the company’s registration with the state was set to expire.

The commissioners suspended Legal Meds’ license for a month after a state investigation in August 2012 found numerous violations of state law, including growing marijuana at an unlicensed premises and purchasing marijuana from other medical marijuana businesses.